Roddy Doyle – författare

'ENDLESSLY ABSORBING' Mail on Sunday'MASTERPIECE' The Times'RUTHLESS' Daily Telegraph'INCOMPARABLE' Sunday Mirror'SEARINGLY HONEST' The SunThe No.1 bestselling memoir of Roy Keane, former captain of Manchester United and IrelandIn a stunning collaboration with Booker Prize-winning author Roddy Doyle, Roy Keane gives a brutally honest account of his days as a player, the highs and lows of his managerial career and his life as an outspoken ITV pundit.As part of a tiny elite of football players, Roy Keane has had a life like no other. His status as one of football's greatest stars is undisputed, but what of the challenges beyond the pitch? How did he succeed in coming to terms with life as a former Manchester United and Ireland leader and champion, reinventing himself as a manager and then a broadcaster, and cope with the psychological struggles this entailed?THE SECOND HALF blends anecdote and reflection in Roy Keane's inimitable voice. The result is an unforgettable personal odyssey which fearlessly challenges the meaning of success.

From the Booker Prize winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Commitments: the story of an ordinary woman whose extraordinary character will stay with you long after reading.‘He loved me and he beat me. I loved him and I took it. It’s as simple as that’Paula Spencer is thirty-nine, the mother of four and learning to live without Charlo, her violent, abusive husband.Paula’s started drinking more and dreaming more, taking herself back to her contented childhood and audacious teenage years. Everything was better then, not least the music, the soundtrack to her romance with Charlo. As the past floats by and mingles with the present Paula Spencer finds herself coming alive, in all her vulnerability and her strength.‘Roddy Doyle's unsparing examination of a brutal marriage transcends the boundaries of class and nationhood’ The Times

'A masterpiece' Irish Times'Exhilarating' Daily TelegraphBorn in the Dublin slums of 1901, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast.By the time he can walk he's out robbing and begging, often cold and always hungry, but a prince of the streets. By Easter Monday, 1916, he's fourteen years old and already six-foot-two, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army. A year later he's ready to die for Ireland again, a rebel, a Fenian and a killer. With his father's wooden leg as his weapon, Henry becomes a Republican legend - one of Michael Collins' boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bikeDiscover Roddy Doyle's latest novel THE WOMEN BEHIND THE DOOR now.

It's 1924, and New York is the centre of the universe. Henry Smart, on the run from Dublin, falls on his feet. He is a handsome man with a sandwich board, behind which he stashes hooch for the speakeasies of the Lower East Side. He catches the attention of the mobsters who run the district and soon there are eyes on his back and men in the shadows. It is time to leave, for another America...Chicago is wild and new, and newest of all is the music. Furious, wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. His music is everywhere, coming from every open door, every phonograph. But Armstrong is a prisoner of his colour; there are places a black man cannot go, things he cannot do. Armstrong needs a man, a white man, and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.

Ten years on from The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Booker Prize-winning author, Roddy Doyle, returns to one of his greatest characters, Paula Spencer.Paula Spencer is turning forty-eight, and hasn’t had a drink for four months and five days. Her youngest children, Jack and Leanne, are still living with her. They're grand kids, but she worries about Leanne.Paula still works as a cleaner, but all the others doing the job seem to come from Eastern Europe. You can get a cappuccino in the café and the checkout girls are all Nigerian. Ireland is certainly changing, but then so too is Paula – dry, and determined to put her family back together again. ‘A phenomenally rewarding read… Could not be bettered in its depiction of the minutiae of the life of a recovering alcoholic: relentless, trivial, terrified’ Observer

*A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOKER PRIZE GEM* WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 1993Paddy Clarke is ten years old.Paddy Clarke lights fires. Paddy Clarke's name is written in wet cement all over Barrytown. Paddy Clarke's heroes are Father Damien (and the lepers), Geronimo and George Best. Paddy Clarke knows the exact moment to knock a dead scab from his knee. Paddy Clarke hates his brother Francis because that’s the rule. Paddy Clarke loves his Ma and Da, but it seems like they don't love each other, and Paddy wants to understand, but can't.

We last saw Henry Smart, his leg severed in an accident with a railway boxcar, crawl into the Utah desert to die - only to be discovered by John Ford, who's there shooting his latest Western. The Dead Republic opens in 1951. Henry is returning to Ireland for the first time since his escape in 1922. With him are the stars of Ford's latest film, John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, and the famous director himself, who has tried to suck the soul out of Henry and turn it into Hollywood gold-dust.Ten years later Henry is in Dublin, working in Ratheen as a school caretaker. When he is caught in a bomb blast, he loses his leg for the second time. He is claimed as a hero, and before long Henry will discover he has other uses too, when the peace process begins in deadly secrecy...

Bullfighting moves from classrooms to graveyards, local pubs to bullrings; featuring an array of men at their working day and at rest, taking stock and reliving past glories. Each is concerned with loss in different ways - of their place in the world, of power, virility, love - of the boom days and the Celtic Tiger. Brilliantly observed, funny and moving, the stories in Bullfighting present a new vision of contemporary Ireland, of its woes and triumphs.

Longlisted for the 2015 IMPAC Dublin Literary AwardJimmy Rabbitte is back.The man who invented the Commitments back in the eighties is now forty-seven, with a loving wife, four kids ... and bowel cancer. He isn’t dying, he thinks, but he might be.Jimmy still loves his music, and he still loves to hustle. On his path through Dublin he meets two of the Commitments – Outspan, whose own illness is probably terminal, and Imelda Quirk, still as gorgeous as ever. This warm, funny novel is about friendship and family, about facing death and opting for life.Includes the short story Jimmy Jazz

Here, in one volume, are Roddy Doyle’s three acclaimed novels about the Rabbitte family from Barrytown, Dublin. In them we follow the rapid rise of Jimmy Rabbitte’s soul band, the Commitments, and their equally rapid fall; Sharon Rabbitte’s attempts to keep the identity of her unborn child’s father a secret, amid intense speculation from her family and friends; and the fortunes of the travelling fish ‘n’ chips van that Jimmy Rabbitte Sr and his friend Bimbo launch for the good people of Barrytown. ‘Mr Doyle has made his own the gritty world of modern Dublin’New York Times‘An absurd comedy of the commonplace…a charming, truthful and immensely funny story which leaves you gasping for more’ Sunday Times on The Commitments‘A superb creation, exploding with cheerful chauvinism and black Celtic humour… You finish the book hungry for more’The Times on The Snapper ‘A wonderfully funny book, that crackles and spits like fat in the fryer. It is also very touching…fine entertainment’ Daily Telegraph on The Van

A landmark collection of newly written ghost stories from five of the world's greatest writers'I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly' Charles Dickens, from the preface to A Christmas CarolFrom Edgar Allen Poe to Charles Dickens, from Shirley Jackson to Toni Morrison, the greatest writers have, in some way or other, always been drawn to that ancient, mysterious thing- the haunting. A Ghostly Little Book is a slim, beautiful testament to the enduring appeal of the spook, a landmark collection of especially composed modern ghost stories from five of the most acclaimed and exciting authors at work today. Elif Shafak, Roddy Doyle, Eliza Clark, Tom Crewe and Helen Oyeyemi are some of the most original and arresting writers on the planet, and their tales are map of all of the many twists and turns the ghost story might take; at turns strange, unsettling, heartwarming, hilarious and, of course, blood-chilling.

THE PHENOMENAL MEMOIR OF A NATIONAL TREASUREAfter Kellie Harrington won gold at the Tokyo Olympics, the Irish public recognized her as not merely a sporting hero, but a deeply inspirational human being. Now, Kellie tells the story of her unlikely journey to the top, and of the many obstacles and setbacks she overcame along the way.Growing up in Dublin's north inner city, Kellie was in danger of going down the wrong path in life before she discovered boxing. The local boxing club was all-male and initially wouldn't let her join, but she persisted.She was not an overnight success. For years she struggled in international competition. At times she felt unsupported by the national boxing set-up. More than once she considered giving up the sport. But some spark of ambition and love for boxing kept her going, and gradually she made herself world class.Writing with Roddy Doyle, the award-winning author of The Commitments, Kellie tells the story of her unlikely rise to greatness and her continuing dedication to living a normal life - which has involved remaining an amateur boxer and keeping the job she loves, at a Dublin psychiatric hospital. She shares exceptionally vivid and revealing details about being a woman in a historically male sport, and about how she manages her body and her mind. It is a vastly inspiring look inside the life and psychology of a woman who is both brilliantly ordinary and utterly exceptional.

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Meet the Rabbitte family, motley bunch of loveable ne'er-do-wells whose everyday purgatory is rich with hangovers, dogshit and dirty dishes. When the older sister announces her pregnancy, the family are forced to rally together and discover the strangeness of intimacy.But the question remains: which friend of the family is the father of Sharon's child?By the bestselling author of The Commitments, now a long-running West End stage show. 'Unstoppable fun. A big-hearted, big-night out' The Times

Barrytown, Dublin, has something to sing about. The Commitments are spreading the gospel of the soul. Ably managed by Jimmy Rabbitte, brilliantly coached by Joey 'The Lips' Fagan, their twin assault on Motown and Barrytown takes them by leaps and bounds from the parish hall to the steps of the studio door. But can The Commitments live up to their name?The bestselling book behind the long-running West End stage show. 'Unstoppable fun. A big-hearted, big-night out' The Times

Roddy Doyle's Booker Prize-winning novel describes the world of ten-year-old Paddy Clarke, growing up in Barrytown, north Dublin. From fun and adventure on the streets, boredom in the classroom to increasing isolation at home, "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" is the story of a boy who sees everything but understands less and less.